


Mother X

by tetrahedron



Series: Savedra Shepard [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, Biotics, Conatix, First Contact War, Gen, Pregnancy, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 03:50:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7602229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tetrahedron/pseuds/tetrahedron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karin Chakwas' road to the Alliance is not as straightforward as it seems. An origin story set within the Surrogate AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother X

Karin Chakwas takes her studies seriously. She worked hard to earn a full ride scholarship to the University of Singapore and she’s determined not to waste it. Let her peers dream idly about what unknown realms lie beyond the stars; she is more intrigued by the secrets hidden within the human genome. The plan she has set for herself is an arduous one: 4 years of undergrad, a combined masters-doctorate program, a paper published in a top tier academic journal, a post-doc under a big-name professor, and then, finally, a lab of her own. But she is driven and ambitious, and if, as her friends claim, her plan leaves scant room for the things other people might consider to be the standard components of “a life”, well, that’s just fine by her. She finds that the components of life are perfectly visible when viewed through the eyepiece of a microscope, anyhow.

But in the second semester of her junior year, her plan goes off track.

…

The boy is nothing special, just the usual sort of encounter she indulges in every now and then to take the edge off. Later she will struggle to remember identifying physiological traits, whether his hair was brown or black, his eyes green or blue, but for now all that matters is that he is enthusiastic, his hips pressing up into her thighs, and his mouth hot against hers. An hour later and she’s gone, walking quickly through humid night air, trying to beat the rain back to her dorm.

A month goes by before she realizes what a fool she’s been. That’s when the nausea starts, the waves of exhaustion, the fits of dizziness. Her roommate takes her to the campus health center where the staff nurse administers the test.

She gets a call later that day. Positive.

There is no question in her mind as to what she will do about it. Her life is already planned out. There is no room for this kind of mistake. One small operation and this can just a be a temporary aberration, a tiny blip on her path to achieving her goals, clean and simple. It’s not even a choice, really. She makes an appointment for the following Monday.

That night her roommate pulls her away from her studies. Her parents have a summer house out on the coast where they can go and rest for the weekend. “To get your mind off things,” she says. Karin tries to protest that the only thing on her mind is the upcoming p-chem exam, but her roommate refuses to take no for an answer.

They go by high speed rail, and her roommate books them into the first class car, the one with the roof made of clear reinforced glass, so that you can watch the skyscrapers flash by from your seat. She orders them two glasses of her favorite brandy, the kind that’s become Karin’s favorite too, and they sit across from each other, sipping it as the train speeds through the heart of the city.

They are miles from the city, halfway through the suburbs when Karin sees it: a dark blot against the stars, falling. From under glass she watches, frozen, as it tumbles through the night sky, leaving a burning trail in it’s wake. There are shouts of alarm as it comes closer and closer. At the very last second, she closes her eyes.

When she opens them again her head aches, and there is a queer ringing in her ears. She sucks in a breath, and quickly coughs it back out. The air is full of dust, and bits of glass fall from her hair when she moves. She pushes off the debris that is covering her head, and steps forward, only to go abruptly still. Her roommate is lying next to her in the shattered remains of the train car, a large shard of clear glass protruding from her throat.

…

At the hospital they treat her for minor abrasions and shock, and check her into a bed. She sleeps for what feels like an entire day. When she wakes up she is in a different room, and there is a man sitting by her side. He is dressed all in white plastic, and a breathing mask covers his face.

He tells her that the crash was caused by a transport freighter licensed to the Eldfell-Ashland corporation. Hundreds were killed at the site, and many more were seriously injured. She is lucky to be alive, he says, his eyes not meeting hers.

She asks when she can go home.

The man is silent for a moment. Then he sighs, looking down at his hands.

The problem, he says, is the cargo the freighter was carrying.

…

Karin has taken enough physics to be familiar with the basic principles of mass effect fields. But over the next few months, she will learn more than she ever imagined about the mysterious substance known as element zero.

She learns that dust particles have drifted out from the crash site, contaminating the air in a 20 mile radius. She learns that the magnitude of the concentration to which she and thousands of others have been exposed to has no precedent in modern medicine. She learns that without radical treatment, her organs will begin to shut down.

A full week goes by before she even thinks about her pregnancy. When she brings it up, they tell her medical intervention is no longer possible. Her immune system has been too severely compromised. They say that most likely she will lose the fetus ‘naturally’, as if that is somehow preferable.

(She’d wanted it to be clean, precise. A quick cut, a sharp pinch like the needle going into your arm, a pain you could measure out in numbers. Not like this slow wasting. Her hair is falling out, her skin going thin and sallow even as her stomach swells. She understands; both she and the child are fighting for their lives.)

The sickness of pregnancy is doubled by the shaking and chills of localized radiation treatment. Soon she is bedridden.

The days are long and dull. She doesn’t get many visitors. The University has been evacuated. Her mother is light years away, teaching remedial english on one of the new mining colonies. She downloads her course texts, and tries to keep up on her studies. She makes a point of questioning her doctors. Their replies are unsatisfactory, but it’s no use looking for answers on the extranet. Element zero is too new, they say, the effects are practically unknown.And she wonders if despite all her hard work and everything she’s hoped to achieve, her legacy to the scientific community will ultimately come under a pseudonym: Patient X.

…

Little by little, she gets stronger.

The baby does, too.

Her stomach is steadily growing, and as strength returns to her limbs, she can feel the movements of the child under her skin.

After months of radiation therapy, they tell her she is responding to the treatment.

That week, when the doctor comes to see her, he asks her if she still wants to schedule the procedure.

Karin tells him she’s changed her mind.

Not all the way, not so much that she wants to be saddled with a squalling infant for the next two decades, thank you very much. But if the baby can survive exposure to a massive dose of toxic dust particles, as well as months of intensive radiation treatment, she figures it’s earned the right to life. Just like her.

…

It’s around this time that Karin gets a visitor. A woman in a crisp black and white suit walks into her room, her hair falling in waves around her face. She has an easy smile, and she brings a bouquet of bright yellow flowers. She tells Karin that she works for an adoption agency.

This, Karin will later come to understand, is a lie.

She says that the nurses have contacted her regarding Karin’s situation, that she is there to help discuss her options.

And for the rest of her life Karin will hope that this, too, is lie. For which of the nurses could possibly have done it? Anna,plump with red hair, who’d always put honey in her tea? Constance, dark and severe, who’d brought her the latest newsvids and quizzed her on her coursework? Or any of the others who’d held her hand and sat with her while the drugs were burning through her veins like liquid fire and it was all she could do to lie still and gasp for breath. She tells herself it’s not true, but late at night when she can’t get to sleep, she will wonder. How could any of them have done it, she will think, balling her fists up beneath her pillow, how could it be possible. That they could hold her hand and stroke her hair and take that woman’s money just the same.

But for now all she knows is that she’s been given a way out. The woman tells her all about the families that are waiting for a baby like her daughter, the rigorous checks conducted by her agency to ensure a suitable placement. “Of course,” she says, her eyes shifting back to Karin’s face, smile stretching wide, “most of our clients do prefer a closed adoption. So much less confusing for the child that way. You understand.”

When the woman gives her the paperwork that will determine her involvement, Karin does not hesitate. She checks the box at the very bottom, the one that terminates all parental rights, that leaves her anonymous, untraceable. There will be no trail to follow, not even a name to tether her to the person this child will become. They will both move forward in separate directions, her back to university and to her degree, and the child to an agency that will give her the family she deserves. She does not want to know who, or where. She will be nameless, faceless, an empty box: Mother X.

The woman takes the papers with her signature and departs. Karin does not see her again. The flowers begin to wither almost immediately, the edges of their petals turning brown and veined, until at last one of the nurses clears them away.

As her due date approaches, Karin works on slowly building up the muscles that have degenerated from lack of use. The baby grows stronger too, it’s kicks more powerful. They are both eager for their new lives to begin, she thinks. 

Birth, when it comes, is messy and frightening, and different than they described in the vids. No, she doesn’t want to use the mirror. No, she doesn’t want to hold the baby. Though she can’t help but look, as they are carrying her away. Eyes darting around in a little face, mouth screwed up in wordless distress.

 _Welcome to the world_ , she thinks, lying back exhausted on her bed. _I’ve done all I can for you. You’re on your own, now_.

…

The morning she leaves the hospital the air is hot, humid and redolent with the smell of skycar exhaust and blooming flowers. She takes in a deep breath.

…

The years go by. Karin finishes school, graduating with high honors. Her professors write glowing reference letters filled with praise for her determination and courage, which is almost enough to make up for the gap in her academic record. She’s accepted into a grad program at a first rate school. She gets a few things published, but nothing impressive enough to get her the kind of attention and funding she’ll need to run her own lab. She’s been in academia long enough now to understand that hard work will only get you so far. At her level, the competition is fiercer than ever. If she wants a shot at the top, she needs to get her name on something truly groundbreaking. 

Gene therapy is old news, infectious and degenerative diseases have all but died out. The government, the military and the private sector are all interested in one thing: the effects of prolonged eezo exposure on the central nervous system, and, more specifically, the method by which those exposed are able to manipulate gravity fields. There is a boom in the STEM fields as a rush of funding pours in.

A post-doc now, Karin is offered a fellowship in a Conatix funded lab. It’s mostly grunt work, but at any other lab at least half her time would have been spent writing grant proposals. Better yet, the principle investigator on the project is Professor Rudyard Saavedra, a luminary of the nascent biotic research community. His is a name that will open doors for her.

Still, there are a few red flags. For one thing, the lab is off-planet. She has to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they’ll even tell her where. At first she balks, picturing some grim pre-fab station on a backwater colony light years away from civilization. She is surprised and relieved when they tell her it’s in Milgrom, on Bekenstein. She reasons that the wealthiest citizens in the galaxy wouldn’t allow anything too controversial in their own backyard. On the other hand, it’s clear that money can buy silence. None of her professors or colleagues have heard anything about the project.

It’s only a few years, she tells herself. All she needs is her name attached to that paper. Once they publish, she can go anywhere she pleases.

She signs the contract.

…

By now, Karin is familiar with what goes on in a research lab.

Back in undergrad it was little white mice. She’d scoop one up, feel it wriggling in her hand, check it carefully for tumors before returning it to its cage. Any early pangs of guilt were gradually replaced by the conviction that the research was necessary. And after all, it was not for nothing that they suffered. Her field had all but wiped out the diseases and illnesses that plagued mankind for centuries. One could measure out the last two hundred years of scientific advances and breakthroughs in the lives of little white mice. It was a small price to pay for progress.

Over the course of her academic career she’s run several such trials. She’s worked with fruit flies, mice, rats, and, on one memorable occasion, primates.

On Bekenstein, she finds things have progressed even further.

The lab is located in a special wing of the cancer ward at Good Shepherd Children’s Hospital. Her subjects range in age from 4 to 10 years old. All of them have suffered pre-natal exposure to element zero.

And though she tries not to think about what it could mean, Karin has a moment of horror. She’d thought she was giving her child a gift, a chance at life. There is nothing clean or precise about the cancer ward. These children suffered, were made to suffer longer in order that their symptoms might be explored, documented, understood.

She tries to consider it rationally. If her child had died back in Singapore, naturally or otherwise, she would have had no qualms about donating fetal tissue. Was this so different? Unlike the trials she’d run in undergrad, this sickness had not been induced. It had come back of it’s own accord. Was it not for the best that their condition be studied, in order that other children might be spared?

But it is one thing to be rational, and quite another to walk up and down that row of beds every day, checking vitals, measuring growths, looking into their dull eyes and each time wondering, _is it you, are you the one?_ She catches herself studying noses, the shapes of ears, the curve of a lip for any sign of herself. But any trace of what might have been is hidden by the sickness that has ravaged their small bodies.

When she can’t get to sleep, she starts taking anti-anxiety medication. When that stops working, she goes looking for something stronger. But there is nothing that can erase their pitiful, swollen faces from her dreams, nothing that can stop the erratic beating of her heart when she remembers the way her daughter looked in the nurse’s arms as they took her away.

And she thinks that it would be different if only she _knew_. For it very well could be none of them, couldn’t it? Not all of the exposed children became ill, after all. It had been documented that some remained completely unaffected, while a small percentage went on to develop the ability to create mass effect fields.

Perhaps her child is somewhere else altogether, alive and well. Perhaps she died years ago.

Perhaps she is dying now.

And so in the end she plots and schemes, gathering the necessary information piece by piece. Which of the night nurses can be bought off with a favor. Which of the lab assistants are likely to stay overnight. The codes to the records mainframe are the easiest pieces to collect. It is the research data that is considered valuable, not the patient intake forms.

She picks a night the hospital is understaffed, waits for the on-call to take his break, and slips into the nurses station. The software, designed for the overworked hospital staff, is not particularly sophisticated. Once she inputs the correct codes it is easy enough to navigate. Five minutes is all it takes to download everything she needs. Then she is riding down the elevator to the main floor, walking out the clear blue glass doors and back to her studio apartment.

At first she is stymied. The identity fields are all blank. No names, no history, not even a date of birth. There is nothing to tie any of these children back to her, or anyone else. They are catalogued by year, by number. And she thinks back to the hospital forms, how she hadn’t wanted to leave any trace of herself. She has done her job too well, there are no distinguishing details left to pick out, no trail of breadcrumbs that will lead her back to Singapore.

She is scrolling randomly through the data when something catches her eye.

On each form, there is one field that always has the same value. A name, one she recognizes.

Every single child was brought in by the same adoption agency.

And Karin remembers how the woman had been so helpful, so easy to find, lingering around the hospital like a carrion creature.

She does not believe in coincidences anymore.

Karin puts her hand to her mouth, bites down hard on her fingers. She is trembling. This wasn’t where she was supposed to have gone, she thinks, her whole body shaking. She was supposed to go to a _family_. Slumping forward in her chair, Karin thinks about her name on that paper, what it would mean for her, for her career.

Her own lab, a project of her choosing, everything she’s been working for for years and years.

She makes copies of the data, and sends it off anonymously to a handpicked group of journalists, human rights organizations, and government watchdog agencies. It is the last time she will wind up a pseudonym. Informant X.

…

It comes out slowly at first. How Conatix created the adoption agencies under a shell corporation, how they sent representatives to hospitals with instructions to collect as many exposed subjects as possible. Mothers judged amenable to separation were told their children would be placed with families. Those less willing to part from their children had to make due with colder comforts. And it is this piece of deceit that does them in, for though the public might have been willing to forgive a few extreme actions in the name of the greater good, the blatant cruelty of the thing could not be overlooked. For one cannot watch the morning news, see the tear stained face of a mother who five years ago had been told that her child was dead, and take solace in the notion of progress. Progress requires that it’s victims stay faceless and nameless in order to remain a pristine ideal. You are not meant to look into the depths of it’s wet red underbelly, to gaze upon the strange and terrible machinery by which it operates, the lives it requires to fuel its glorious ascent.

It’s the kind of story that gives off a scent, rotten-sweet. One whiff is enough to start the journalists circling. And once they get their teeth in and start tugging, it’s only a matter of time until the whole putrid mess splits open. Soon all the sordid details are laid bare and steaming for public consumption: how the freighter was sabotaged from the start. How many other “accidents” were staged. How Conatix specifically targeted areas with high concentrations of women of child-bearing age. It is worse than Karin thought, they’ve had their hooks in her right from the beginning.

Several laws are passed regulating the supply of element zero. A new government organization is formed to monitor and track biotically enhanced individuals. There is a huge lawsuit, with a record-breaking settlement.

Karin does not claim any of it. That kind of thing can be traced, she knows too well, and she wants no part of their stain on her life, no blood money on her conscience. She will be free of their influence, no matter the cost.

Her career is finished. Even though she has successfully kept her name out of the vids, it is obvious to anyone involved where the leak came from. Her name is passed over, her applications quietly rejected. Academia has it’s own way of expressing disapproval.

And maybe it’s for the best, because Karin finds she has lost her taste for lab work. The memory of those children weighs on her, reminding her that years of study may have made her into a doctor, but not the kind that can heal.

She decides to change that.

It means throwing the last 6 years of her life out the window, not to mention taking on a truly astronomical amount of debt, but she doesn’t look back.

Her test scores are high enough to all but guarantee acceptance, but with her background most programs won’t touch her. The military isn’t so picky. The Alliance recruiter looks her up and down, and offers her a deal. They’ll pay for her schooling in return for her service. All in all, she’s looking at four years of med school, and ten of active duty as a commissioned officer.

She signs her name to the contract.

…

Medical school doesn’t leave her much free time. After her deployment she has even less. But she checks in on her former test subjects whenever she gets the chance. Most of them have died by the time she completes her training. One by one, they slip away. Until at last there is only one name left.

…

By her third year of service, the Alliance is at war.

…

Karin is a little surprised at how well military life suits her. Here at last she has found people who value hard work, who know the meaning of sacrifice. She watches young men and women give their lives to protect civilians, fighting an enemy that outmatches them in every way. She pushes herself past the brink of exhaustion tending to the wounded and the dying. When she does sleep, there are no children’s faces in her dreams.

…

The war ends. She’s served her time, and then some. By now she’s earned her pick of assignments. If she wanted she could request a transfer to Arcturus, settle into a comfortable life teaching the best and the brightest young minds of the Alliance. 

Instead, she puts in a request to join Admiral Anderson’s crew on the Normandy.

Sitting in her tiny apartment, Karin looks down at the roster. In one hand she swirls a glass of brandy. The other traces the name on the data pad.

Names mean nothing, she knows that. The ones that lived through the initial experiments were assigned names randomly, for doctors, nurses on shift, the hospital, the city. There is no link between her and the girl they call Savedra Shepard. No link but the part of herself that whispers _mine_ , by simple process of elimination.

She thinks back to that moment in the hospital, that little face, lost forever. By contrast, Shepard’s face on the datapad is closed off and stiff, her stare impenetrable.

 _What can you possibly give her now_ , Karin thinks, closing her eyes. She downs the rest of the glass, feeling it burn in her throat. _You’re getting sentimental in your old age_.

But she knows herself well enough by now to recognize when her mind is made up.

Her request is accepted by the end of the day. And so for what feels like the hundredth time, Karin Chakwas begins the process of shedding her old life, readying herself to step once again into the unknown.

**Author's Note:**

> hug your mom, everyone.


End file.
